Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Vietnamese counterpart, Nguyen Xuan Phuc,
pledged to work together toward the rapid passage of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership trade agreement during a meeting in Tokyo on Tuesday.

U.S. companies signed business deals with Vietnam worth over $8 billion on
Wednesday, including power projects and jet engines from General Electric Co
(GE.N) and diesel generator technology from Caterpillar (CAT.N), the Commerce
Department said.

Vietnam should not continue to try to become an industrial power and instead
should shift to developing agriculture and tourism, according to economist Le
Xuan Nghia, head of the Business Development Institute (BDI).

“After a first phase 2014-2016 marked by the return of the Peugeot brand in
Vietnam, this agreement materializes the acceleration of our ambitions in the
Vietnamese market. A dynamic Network development plan will accompany the growth
of the brand in Vietnam by 2020.”

Vietnam weathered an epic drought in 2016 and the World Bank estimates a
third of its 93 million people still live in poverty. You hear about corruption
and faltering agriculture, perhaps a reason why people are poor.

Việt Nam is ranked fifth in the list of the world’s most optimistic
countries on economic prosperity in 2017, according to a survey by WIN/Gallup,
the world’s leading association in market research and polling.

Vietnam's economy expanded an estimated 6.21 percent this year, slightly
behind 2015 and marking the first slowdown in four years, but a fourth-quarter
surge to 6.68 percent was the best for a year, keeping it among Asia's
fastest-growing economies.

Viet Nam is expected to adopt International Financial Reporting Standards
(IFRS) instead of the current Vietnamese accounting standards (VAS) by 2025 in
its efforts to enhance comparability and improve transparency.

Vietnam’s government has invited global investment banks to pitch for a
mandate to sell a stake in the country’s largest beer company worth at least a
$1.8 billion, according to people familiar with the situation, kicking off what
could be the largest sale of a Vietnamese state-run firm.

Vietnam’s ambassador in Belgium will address Walloon parliamentarians on
Thursday to try to protect his country’s trade accord with the EU from the
political storm that almost sank a pact with Canada last month.

Vietnam will shelve ratification of a U.S.-led Pacific trade accord due to
political changes ahead in the United States, but wants to maintain good
relations with Washington as much as it does all other countries, its prime
minister said on Thursday.

Việt Nam will continue its reform to improve business and investment
environment to support enterprises and negotiate other agreement whether US
president-elect Donald Trump thwarts the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) or
not, according to the Minister of Trade and Industry Trần Tuấn Anh.